APHORISMATA ENTOMOLOGICA. 9 



for the purpose in the following manner: — The glass b having had its 

 foot broken oiF, is cemented to a box-wood handle, a. Opposite to a a 

 slot is made about an inch in length, and wide enough to let the wire 

 frame, presently mentioned, travei-se it freely. 



A wire frame, a, d, c, e, is formed, following the outline of the 

 glass and handle, and bearing at the rectangular end c a disc of card- 

 board, blackened. This disc, which is rather larger in diameter than 

 the mouth of the glass, is attached to the straight part of the wire by 

 a sort of continuous staple, formed by glueing over it a strip of paper. 

 The disc therefore is moveable about the line c as an axis, whilst the 

 part of the wire moveable in the slot a enables one readily to remove 

 the disc from the mouth of the glass, as in Fig. 3; or, when the glass 

 has been placed over the captive, to close it as in Fig. 4. 



If the capture was intended to be retained, the closed glass was 

 removed to a small stand, beneath a hole in which was a bottle con- 

 taining the very strongest ammonia, or other more effectual vapour 

 destructive of life. 



The thin cardboard dis3 being now slipped aside, the insect was 

 exposed to the vapour. In a short time all consciousness having been 

 destroyed, it seemed the safer plan to make sure of the extinction of 

 life. 



You will perceive that by this system the insect was never touched 

 by the fingers, and its perfection was unimpaired." 



"in extesso. 



If one ever thinks at all about the various facts with which we are 

 necessarily conversant in every-day life, it can hardly fail to occur to 

 the mind, that not only the origin of many of the most useful of the 

 "appliances and means" with which we are even the most familiar, is 

 lost in the mists of antiquity, but that the very names of the discoverers 

 and inventors of the most useful and beneficial sciences and arts are 

 for ever buried in oblivion, if indeed it was at any time their lot to rise 

 from the obscurity v/hich too often shrouds the most meritorious and 

 deserving benefactors of the human race. 



Who then was the inventor of the mode of setting insects that I 

 am about to mention and explain, I am utterly unable to say, and 

 perhaps no one may now know. Possibly the ^'^ephemeral" nature of 

 the subject may have been thought to have imparted a derived un- 



